Project Profile

Bike Sharing Naples is a research project on alternative mobility, which envisages a bicycle network placed in 10 stations which act as points of collection and delivery of bicycles, through a user-friendly smart app.

The App, a truly innovative engine, provides the availability of the bikes and parking spots in real time, suggesting routes for tourists or suitable to cyclists and allows sharing and challenges with friends with a view to social gaming; it signals local activities and the enjoyment of historical-artistic goods.

The experimental service focuses on encouraging intermodality and resolving the problem of the last kmthanks to integration with other modes of public transport; in this way it will be able to reduce the number of private vehicles on the road to the full advantage of sustainable mobility and viability.

The infrastructure of the cycle stations, light and non-invasive, is composed of aplug and play system which allows the addition or removal or individual modules; the information Totem contains information for citizens and tourists, as well as a Wi-Fi Hotspot to aid user connection.

The robust and easily recognisable bicycles are designed to resist atmospheric agents and vandalising acts and are, furthermore, fitted with GPS for real-time tracking. An essential element for the research, analysis and monitoring of traffic flows and environmental information.

Finally, the community: platform for crowdsourcing and interaction in which favourite routes and information can be shared on social networks, to encourage active user participation through personal achievements, to develop a greater sense of sharing and belonging, a pillar of smart cities and social innovation.

An ecological and economic system, as easy as riding a bike!

Bike Sharing Naples is a Cleanap project, the association which concerns itself with sustainability, the environment and social innovation.

Results achieved

Bike Sharing Naples is a sustainable mobility research project with the general aim of offering an experimental shared bicycle service in a defined area of citizen territory. The innovative component of the service will be due to the app and the constant interactions within the dedicated community, which will allow an upgrade over the course of the project in order to render the service high-performing and competitive.

To render each station a real and genuine smart island the project team has chosen to resize the diffusion in the territory to increase the qualitative value of the intelligent stations.
This choice has imposed in parallel the desire to spend more time creating the app, making it more interactive and transversal, with sections concerning culture and tourism, as well as proximity marketing. In summary we have opted to reduce the number of cycle stations while increasing their innovativeness, that is:

• going from 20 cycle stations and 250 bikes > to 10 cycle stations and 120 bikes (+ 2 cycle stations used for demonstrations and/or as temporary stations for events, exhibitions and performances);
• Multimedia Totems and Wi-Fi connectivity at each cycle station and not just the biggest;
• GPS and pollution sensors on each bicycle which can interact with the app;
• Integration of electric engines (e.g.: Copenhagen Wheel) to respond to growing demand.

In light of this premise, the results achieved thus far are the creation of the App in iOS and Android versions, soon on the market in free download in conjunction with the launch of testing. Anther index very important to us is that of the promotion and diffusion of the project in the territory, translated to around 2200 followers on social media and 1000 newsletter subscribers, together with participation in numerous events (Light, Three days with the school and VOICES to Science City, T-BIZ, SMAU, SME Bologna, Night of art - Let's Sing Naples, Open Data Day, #Naplescreativecity) which has allowed us to illustrate the concept of sustainable mobility.
The results obtained were considered in the light of the launch of testing, therefore they obviously took into consideration the number of registered tester users and a presumably higher number of users and followers from the campaign of communication of the launch of testing and from the physical presence of the infrastructure on the road. This phase of the project is however in the home stretch and expected for spring/summer 2014.